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thanks for the suggestion. I think I understand the concept of replacing the qsf as project database by user scripts, it's basically discussed in the Quartus software manual, Volume 2, starting at Chapter 1. I agree that it can solve the raised issue.
Personally I love a GUI centered design with qsf files holding most of the project settings. Lean and easy to setup for a new design. But I see that it has limitations.
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Don't think of the scripts as replacing the GUI, think of them as setting up the GUI independent of the Quartus version. Try running the synthesis scripts I referenced in the above links. Once you run the script, the GUI is fully functional, and is identical to as if you had opened up a .qsf file. You can save the Quartus project as a .qar, and it would be no different than had you started with Project->New.
Tcl has the advantage that you can put useful Tcl procedures in a package (I use one called 'hdl', with 'altera' and 'modelsim' namespaces) and re-use that across multiple projects. It makes for concise Tcl scripts. I tend to remove that functionality from my example designs as it requires setting up environment variables (TCLLIBPATH) before it works.
Cheers,
Dave
Honored Contributor
